EBay has become the latest front in the battle to salvage the battered HP 7 embargo.

Will Collier, the aerospace engineer who put a copy of the book on eBay after receiving it from DeepDiscount.com on Tuesday, has been informed that the online auction site pulled the listing after receiving a complaint from London-based The Christopher Little Literary Agency, which represents J.K. Rowling. According to the site, the agency "notified eBay that this listing violates intellectual property rights. When eBay receives a report of this type of violation, we remove the listing to comply with the law."

The message goes on to explain that "eBay prohibits the listing of unauthorized copies of copyrighted works. Unauthorized copies include (but are not limited to) backup, pirated, duplicated, or bootlegged copies."

While the item Collier posted on eBay was a genuine, legally obtained copy of the book, the agency defended its actions in an e-mail sent to PW. "The publication date for our client's work Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is 21 July 2007 and we have not authorised any prior release or sale. Any such release and/or sale of said work would be an infringement of our client's rights," wrote Neil Blair, an attorney for the agency. "Without our client's consent or approval Mr. Collier included a copy of our client's work on his EBay advertisement and this amounts to an unlawful copying thereby entitling us to send the VERO take down notice which we in fact did."

Blair goes on to say that it, "is not clear to us that this book was obtained through lawful means." But Scholastic has accused DeepDiscount of the very snafu by which Collier said he unexpectedly got his copy early.

It's all turned out fine for Collier, though. In removing the listing, eBay refunded him all the fees for the sale, which had been completed 17 hours earlier. Collier sold the book for $250 to PW. Our review of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows will appear on this site tonight.